We have a quiet morning sitting out under the trees, catching up with email and writing. We service the Hymer and leave late morning for Medinat alzahra which is about 15km north of Córdoba. The day is really hot again, the temperature is 36°C. We arrive at Medinat alzahra about 1.00pm and park on the car park. It looks and feels like the Nevada desert, dry and arid with yellow sand everywhere.

We have a quick lunch and go and buy tickets, we are amazed to find it is free! We pay €1.50 each to the bus driver for a return trip and take the bus the 2km up the steep hill to the Medinat. We step off the cool, air-conditioned bus into the baking midday heat. There are only about ten of us on the bus, we stop and read the information at the entrance. When the others have gone, it is totally silent… just the heat, relentlessly beating down from the sun.

As we walk through the gate in the outer wall we are met with a view of the whole site, the old Medinat (palace-city) of Abd-al-Rahman III al-Nasir, Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba, spread before us. Although a ruin, it is quite breath-taking… a city built in steps into the hillside of the Sierra Morena. Built between 936-940 AD as an Arab Muslim medieval town and, at that time, the capital of al-Andalus, the territory controlled by the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) from the beginning of the 8th century to the middle of the 11th. It housed the Calif, his family (wives and children), all the the servants and close government officials including the Ya’far, his prime minister.

We walk around the site, which is partially restored, sufficient to make the old city and palace rooms come alive. It includes ceremonial reception halls with decorated horseshoe arches on columns, the mosque, administrative and government offices, gardens, a mint, workshops, barracks, baths, residences for government workers and an area of the city where the servants lived. Water was supplied through underground aqueducts which are still visible as a series of ‘tunnels’. The heat of the day is tremendous and as we walk down the old cobbled streets and look into rooms where once someone had lived I realise the place is full of atmosphere.

I sit on the low stone wall and close my eyes, in the silence the centuries slip away and I feel I am almost back in those times… hot, oppressive days, busy people full of purpose. The houses of the city were small but adequate and probably very good by standards of the day. Clean water flowed down the streets, there was a baker and huge oven (even more heat I imagine) to feed the town, latrines and sewers, stables separate from the living quarters and a blacksmith for ironwork. Evidence of huge wooden doors supported on stone door posts, thick stone walls to keep out the heat of the sun.

The horseshoe arches and columns that form the formal entry to the Medinat must have been very impressive, as visitors entered through them and into an open parade ground where the Calif (Adb al Rahman) would be waiting to meet them. Everything is here in these cobbled streets, the baths, the water channels and fresh water, the state rooms with pillars and Medujar arches in the palace of the Calif, rooms for the women, palatial homes for the Ya’far and his ministers. We wander in the heat for two hours, finding the shade when we can. Even as a ruin it feels better than some of the overly cluttered Mesquita in Córdoba.

It is about 4.30pm by the time we catch the bus back down the hill, hot and tired but our heads full of Arabian Night journeys.

The day has been so much more exciting and fulfilling than some of the overly busy tourist places we have visited. We drive 145km to Seville on the E-4 which takes us about two hours. We gradually leave behind acre after acre of olive trees and see nothing but flat yellow plain. We come down almost 800m to sea level arriving at Seville by the docks. We join the Seville traffic at 6.30pm circling around the city, we cross the Guadalquivir river and immediately leave the E-4 looking for our camper park for the night. The first one we find is by the docks and we decide not to stay. The next is by the bridge into the city (Puente de los Remedios) that crosses the Guadalquivir river again into the centre of Seville’s main tourist area.

We stop here, it is an enormous car park, but one end is dedicated for motor home parking. We get a ticket at the barrier (it is €10 for 24 hours), find a spot in the middle overlooking the river and settle in, there are already about 50 motor homes parked here. It is almost 7.30 by the time we are settled, so we walk over the bridge, watching a fleet of rowers from the local rowing club scull down the river, the light is splendid on the water and rowers. Seville reminds us of London, forever ridiculously busy, a kind of business that never stops.

The cars, five lanes deep, constantly circle the roundabout, it would be impossible to cross the roads without the green man traffic lights, it was hard enough with them. We walk to the Plaza de Espana and join hundreds of people in the evening sunset taking photos, selfies, people walking and people talking, children running around the central fountain, changing colours every few minutes and children chasing the bubbles of a bubble seller. We stand and watch taking it all in, it is like a party and the whole of the city is invited.

The evening feels pleasant and cool but the temperature board tells us it is 31°C. When it is dark we return to the camper, drink wine and eat some supper, a stir-fry made with Spanish lomo, sun-dried tomatoes and quails’ eggs. It is hot, but we are so exhausted we sleep immediately and I dream of Arabian nights..